by TJ Donegan, Reviewed.com

by TJ Donegan, Reviewed.com

How much would you - or your teenager - pay per month for a phone that can only access Facebook? How about $12? A new phone plan being offered at Wal-Mart is promising just that, and it has some network neutrality advocates concerned.

These plans, offered by Sprint for a few pre-paid phones under the carrier's Virgin Mobile banner, start at $6.98 per month for 20 texts, 20 minutes of calling and no data. From there, it's a la carte: add as much talk, text or data as you want - or choose unlimited talk and text to bring your total to $35 per month.

Crucially, you can also select "special offers," such as unlimited Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or Instagram at $5 a pop, or all four for $15 per month. There are also offers for unlimited music streaming and GPS navigation for $1 per day or $3 per week.

This means you could buy a phone that has unlimited access to social media, unlimited texting, and 20 minutes of voice calling for $32 per month. While that could be a great value for anyone with kids who spend all day on social media anyway, the plan has ruffled the feathers of net neutrality hawks.

The concern is that with only certain apps and services, white-listed (accepted senders) users of these plans are less likely to try competitors. For advocates of net neutrality - the idea that all data should be treated equally to preserve a level playing field - any kind of selective treatment raises a red flag.

Corynne McSherry, intellectual property director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, thinks that these kinds of plans could have a chilling effect, hindering new services from getting off the ground.

"What I really don't want to have is a world where, if you want to compete for access to Internet users, the first thing that you have to do as part of your business plan is negotiate with Comcast to get in on the bundle," she told us.

From Virgin Mobile's perspective, these plans are just about providing customers with more choice and control by letting them adjust their plan features as often as necessary. Need more texts for the week? Open Virgin's app, and tweak your allocation. Bought too many minutes? Subtract them, and a credit will be added to your bill.

The plans also let parents set curfews on each line, cutting off access to texts or specific services at certain times of day. Account administrators don't need a Virgin Mobile or Sprint plan, since the custom lines can be controlled from any Android or iOS device.

Jayne Wallace, Sprint's director of corporate communications, says that the plans are merely about budgeting and providing parental control, and the plan is to add more special offers later. "We're building this as we go. This is what we're starting with," Wallace said. "We started with the four (social-media offers) that we felt were the most popular."

While the parental controls and plan customizations are novel, they're not unique. T-Mobile made headlines earlier this year by offering unlimited music streaming for its Simple Choice cell plans. It lets users stream from a number of major music-streaming services without affecting their data cap.

Simple Choice broke new ground for U.S. smartphone users, but similar perks have been around in other countries for years. Facebook launched 0.Facebook.com in 2010, offering a fast, text-only version of the site in more than 45 countries. As long as users in those countries don't access photos or leave the site, 0.Facebook doesn't count against their cap. Wikipedia has launched a similar program.

These so-called "zero-rated" services - in which the service pays for the data so users can access them for free - are a source of consternation for net neutrality advocates. For instance, Chile's telecom regulatory body, Subtel, banned zero-rated services in the country this past May because they violate the country's 2010 law protecting net neutrality.

But McSherry doesn't think such laws are necessary in the U.S. "I tend to always think that the first way that these things should get resolved is by competition and not by fiat," McSherry said. "Internet users are going to vote with their wallets - for the whole enchilada, and against a pre-selected snapshot of what the Internet offers."